6Aug2018
Creating a Nuget Package
As part of a Wiliam learning project, I needed to find a way to make a reusable component that could be used for the rest of our developers as a starting point on future projects.
24Nov2016
TLDR; or, The Importance of Documentation
Nobody can be expected to recall the events that occurred in a meeting six months prior to release of a project. We document so that everybody understands the scope of work in such sufficient detail as to produce outstanding work.
19Oct2016
Enabling session state in Web API
Some of you may look at this blog title and say “but you shouldn’t ever do that. Restful APIs are stateless, duh”. This is correct.. but let's break that rule.
1Sep2016
Upgrading Umbraco 4.x to 7.x
I have been working on an exciting project that had to get past a rather daunting hurdle before it could start properly – we needed to upgrade the Umbraco database multiple versions whilst retaining all user content.
18Jul2016
Searching PDFs with Umbraco
My current website has a simple requirement: combine regular page search results with PDF file results. Simple, right?
14Mar2016
Integration testing in .NET
In the cowboy days of web development, writing code tests was the exception and not the rule.
24Feb2016
Sorting with Nestable and Bootstrap MVC
We’ve all had to write a drag-and-drop sorting module in the past, but this combination of jQuery plugin, Bootstrap MVC theme and .NET makes short work of it.
3Dec2015
A super-duper RadioButtonList helper
MVC comes with plenty of helpers, but often I need them to do more.
5Nov2015
Parsing Australian format DateTimes in MVC model binding
I don't know why, but .NET defaults to US format dates for everything.
6Oct2015
Adding enhanced styling to the Umbraco TinyMCE editor
The humble WYSIWYG is an end user’s main interface to editing content on their website. As websites get more complicated, design gets more complicated, and in turn the slice gets more complicated, the WYSIWYG needs to provide more options for styling content.
8Sep2015
A simple split-text custom Umbraco datatype
Designers, eh? They just love making little flourishes on websites.
25Jun2015
5 early Internet things you won’t believe are still a… thing
For those of us who have lived (and worked) through the early days of the World Wide Web, we will have some fond – and not so fond – memories about early websites and early applications.
26May2015
Mandrill, .NET and Handlebars
I was recently tasked with researching how to use the Mandrill API for sending transactional emails.
15May2015
Google: Going Beyond the Result
As the trend for mobile usage continues to eclipse desktop, and the purpose of search itself is tailored to why you would be searching on a mobile in the first place.
28Apr2015
Why won't you let me watch it?
Australia has for the longest time been behind the times in how we make film and television entertainment available to watch.
1Apr2015
April Fools!
So it’s that time of year again. That time when the Internet as a whole pranks each other with fake products and non-existent technologies, all in the name of hilarity.
18Mar2015
Facebook Groups Buy and Sell
Facebook have noticed this rise in buy/sell/trade groups and have rolled out a new feature to accommodate – the Sell Something tab.
4Mar2015
I can’t find anything on this website
I needed to buy flowers. I'm a guy. I don’t know what a bouquet or arrangement is. Just sell me some flowers.
19Feb2015
Internet Explorer: Project Spartan
Spartan’s new rendering engine is designed to work with the way the web is written today.
11Feb2015
Salted Password Hashing
Back in the cowboy days of web development, password security wasn't well considered. Thankfully things have changed for the better.
3Feb2015
The Importance of Code Reviews
It’s been said that peer code reviews are the single biggest thing you can do to improve your code. But how do you do it?
7Jan2015
Where should you store your cart?
When building an e-commerce site, the question of cart persistence will usually rear its head.
22Dec2014
A website is a lot like a hamburger
A website has many layers, all important to the overall experience. The difference between an average website and a great website can be compared to the quality of a hamburger.
3Dec2014
Adding rich snippets to your site for better SEO
There once was a time that SEO simply meant having decent meta keywords on your site. Times have well and truly moved on.
26Nov2014
Optimising your .NET site for Google PageSpeed Insights
Following these suggestions took my site’s PageSpeed ranking from an average 65 up to an excellent 89.
3Nov2014
Two handy tricks in KnockoutJS
KnockoutJS is a powerful MVVM pattern. Here are two helpful tricks I picked up.
28Oct2014
User IP address checking and Akami masking
I was recently faced with a task that required a website to validate a user IP for the purpose of opening up an extra section of the site if it fell within a certain range.
23Oct2014
Happy Birthday Kathleen aka the Why Producers Are Awesome Blog
It’s Wiliamite Producer extraordinaire Kathleen Shrimpton’s 25th birthday today!
7Oct2014
AJAX and providing the illusion of efficiency
When you use AJAX on your website, be sure to give your users a visual cue that something happened when they pressed that button.
23Sep2014
Websites from the 1990s that still exist
It’s unbelievable what sites from nearly 20 years ago are still around today.
29Aug2014
Meaningful Form Validation
Website forms are the gateway to the rich content you are making available, so make them a pleasurable experience.
13Aug2014
Export Excel Spreadsheet data to XML
It turns out that Excel has XML export and data mapping built in and is very easy to use.
30Jul2014
Searching a decoupled Umbraco site
What is the best way to perform a content search on a decoupled Umbraco without the support of Umbraco Examine?
15Jul2014
Disaster Recovery and Redundancy for Websites
How important is DR for you? The answer to this question should be simple: paramount.
17Jun2014
Don’t forget about the small things
Once the dust has settled on your website build, tired eyes may overlook the simpler things.
16May2014
10Apr2014
Can we still trust the padlock?
The hot topic in IT news this week is the discovery of the so-called “Heartbleed” bug in the open source implementation of SSL, OpenSSL.
12Mar2014
Stake Your Claim
Claims is a new addition to .NET 4.5's identity provider that allows you to store pieces of extra information about a user for easy access.
21Feb2014
OMG it’s OWIN
I’ve delved head first into the new world of Visual Studio 2013, .NET 4.5, EF6 and MVC5... OMG I’m loving it.
14Jan2014
Unique value validation in Umbraco back office
It seemed like a simple proposition – add a unique constraint to a single property in an Umbraco doctype.
18Dec2013
Add some Christmas Cheer to your Website
Christmas is but days away. Have you spruced up your website for the pending festivities?
28Nov2013
Inspect Element: It may save your life someday
When Firebug was introduced to the Firefox browser as a plugin, the art of debugging websites changed forever
19Nov2013
Don’t be afraid to write your own JavaScript
With the advent of jQuery many web developers have become so reliant on other people’s code that they try a plugin first before attempting to write something themselves.
5Nov2013
This blog cost five dollars aka The Load Impact Blog
Talking of the day that stops the nation, let's talk about load testing to prevent your website from stopping the nation.
25Oct2013
Five Essential Umbraco Plugins
There are a few essential plugins if you're using the Umbraco Content Management System.
20Sep2013
Six years as a Wiliam developer
Six years is a long time to work for one company. 15 years is a long time to be in the same line of work. Here is what I have learnt.
28Aug2013
A new website is like a new baby
Babies and web development aren't that different... it would seem. Or at least to a new father.
24Jul2013
Are we over-relying on images?
With larger desktop screens and the push for more tablet usage, websites in general are appearing to be more and more image heavy.
25Jun2013
7Jun2013
Cross browser testing gets easier: BrowserStack
The best part? By creating a tunnel to your machine (all done through the interface), you can test your local websites.
21May2013
Dipping my toes into Responsive Design
From looking at the already created CSS and JavaScript from a project I am now co-developing I have learned the basic techniques for creating a responsive template for tablet and mobile devices – and it really isn’t that hard.
30Apr2013
UMBRACO 6 AND THE SERVICECONTEXT
One of the highlights for me with Umbraco 6 was the new feature of being able to access the Umbraco datastore from an external application that didn’t have direct access to an Umbraco Context.
18Mar2013
Is Firefox Still Relevant?
What I found interesting was that Mozilla was still developing.
1Feb2013
Tips for easier mobile browser development
Whilst you can create entirely separate websites for this purpose, in most cases there is simply no real need.
26Nov2012
Final to-do list for when you launch a new website
Here is a handy list of some of the things all developers should be aware of before handing over the keys to the client
28Aug2012
Australia Post API
It now appears that Australia Post offers a free REST API, and have done so for at least a year.
21Aug2012
Umbraco reserved properties and their usage
When you create a property with one of these keywords it has a special action associated with it.
25Jul2012
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Swipe, whiz, fade, slide and pop. There are some cool technologies available to web developers these days, though they need understanding and justification… not simply inclusion because they could be cool.
29May2012
Is it really like Office Space?
When I tell new friends that I am a developer, and explain to them what that entails, I very quickly feel like Peter Gibbons from the movie Office Space.
10Apr2012
Umbraco: Great for your content
The Wiliam development platform of choice for a content heavy site is definitely Umbraco.
15Feb2012
The Power of MVC Compels You!
Recently I've been delving into the wonderful world of MVC. MVC for the uninitiated stands for Model –View-Controller and is a modern design pattern in software design.
22Dec2011
MVC and its tight integration with JQuery
Microsoft MVC 3 has some really cool features.
31Oct2011
Your API is bad and you should feel bad
A few months ago, TechCrunch reported on a survey undertaken with 100 developers. The topic of the survey was which external APIs were the most difficult to integrate into their projects. The winning by clear majority was Facebook. We’ve all worked with their API before and it can be a real headache. Specifically mentioned by the developers surveyed were the API’s never ending changes and poor documentation.
10Oct2011
Ecommerce and simple wins for increasing customer confidence
I’ve built dozens of commerce-enabled websites since the early days of the Internet, and in that time I have learned a few things that, in my opinion and experience, provide for a better ecommerce website that gives your customer greater confidence in your service offering – and customer confidence is the main loyalty you need to gain.
7Sep2011
MailChimp and Mail Groups
Long gone are the days where a developer would need to send bulk emails from his own website. Not only was this time consuming for the developer but it was fraught with possible points of failure – sending too many emails from the one address to the one host is an easy way to get your entire domain put on a spam blacklist.
22Jun2011
Google CSE and Structured Data
Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) is a fantastic technology that enables any website, for the low price of $100 annually, to use the power of Google search technologies within your own website seamlessly.
10Jun2010
Better formatting in Visual Studio 2010
By default Visual Studio’s formatting of code is not as elegant as it could be. I like to be pedantic about the layout of my code as it makes it more readable for me and other developers who have to work on the same projects that I do.
20May2010
Creating Better Forms; an article for developers
Creating a form on a website is not a difficult thing to do with modern frameworks. Ensuring that the form is designed and functions correctly under all circumstances however is not..
7May2010
Tips for working with Google Earth
As part of an exciting upcoming project here at Wiliam, we have been tasked to include Google Earth integration...
11Feb2010
Rapid fire Wednesday (Weekly roundup)
A look at what is happening in the tech world over the past week. Nintendo suing people, online music sales increasing and Facebook revamping their image...again!
8Feb2010
When to call your web developer
A customer has just called you to inform you that your website is down. Before you panic and call your developer which may incur needless support fees, find out from your customer what they mean by ‘website is down'.
22Jan2010
Government recommends: Dump Internet Explorer!
Web developers and the more technical-minded of the Internet populace have long ago realised that Internet Explorer is not a good browser.
23Dec2009
They Giveth and they Taketh Away
The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on overseas servers
12Nov2009
Your website is bad and you should feel bad
There are countless millions of websites on the Internet and most of them are varying degrees of bad. Many are not so bad. A few are really quite something special.
20Oct2009
Website Deployment Checklist
So, you have approved your specification and design concepts. The development is progressing well and is nearing completion. After giving your final feedback, at some point soon, your site will need to ‘go live’ onto the Internet for all to see.
10Sep2009
iPhone Pages - Make Your Mobile Website
So you have engaged your web development company to design and build you your new corporate identity but have you considered how your site will look and function on a mobile device such as the iPhone, Android or a BlackBerry?
1Sep2009
Accessibility From A Developers Point Of View - Part 1
Accessibility from a developers point of view part 1 - some elements that make up a triple A website
18Aug2009
Pay Once For It Now Or Pay Twice For It Later?
When considering the goals for the website you are engaging your web development company to build for you, one of the considerations, perhaps one of the biggest, is price.
23Jul2009
When Should You Give Up On Old Technology
How many of you still use Internet Explorer 6 as your default browser? You may simply refer to it as “The Internet” and double-click the blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop. Or perhaps it is a “custom” build in your office with your company logo on it and your intranet as your home page.
10Jul2009
Why developers and caffeine are a perfect combination
Caffeine is the most important thing to a developer. The spec can be a little unclear and the time constraints too tight. Their workstation can crash three times a day and not be able to open more than Notepad and Paint at the same time (the purest tools of a developer); but you can’t mess around with a developers desire – nay, requirement – for caffeine.
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